new member of the family

Ahhh-Ha...made you look. Some of you will be relieved, some disapointed but the fact remains, we got a dog...(not a small child).

Many of you may have heard stories about our cat, “Puppy”. You will be excited to hear that we have expanded our family by adding a REAL dog. (No, her name is not “Kitty”.) About three weeks ago we got “Joei” from one of Crystal’s friends from work. She is a golden lab/great dane mix, about a year old, and has LOTS of energy. She eats everything. We lose more socks to her than we lose to the dryer. We are training Joei to wear a “doggie backpack” so she can hold her own while we’re camping.

Puppy and Joei are still learning how to be polite to each other. Puppy thinks Joei is trying to kill her while Joei thinks Puppy’s swats and hisses are just in play. We are learning patience and conflict resolution. Please pray for them (and us).

suffering for the Lord

We’re leading a new community group at Doxology that has an emphasis on the outdoors. This is an exciting and perfect fit for us because we love any excuse to play outside. We are “suffering” for the Lord.
We led a small group rock climbing to Smith Rock in Central Oregon. Here Scotty is leading a route for us to climb.

A nice vew of the canyon, the area we climbed on is to the right of the river.

back to school

Scotty and Crystal working on Math homework together.

We’ve been keeping ourselves out of trouble by staying busy. We are both going to school full-time and working full-time:

Scotty is studying Business at Linn Benton Community College. He plans to transfer to Oregon State University for Spring term. His favorite class right now is Business Law. He is also taking Introduction to Business and Calculus. He is still building houses with Steve Oien Construction in Philomath, but he has to cut a couple hours in order to attend school. To make up for this he has taken a weekend job at Paul’s Place, the restaurant he worked at in high school. He really enjoys working there again as he missed some of his old friends.

Crystal is enjoying her first year at OSU. She is majoring in Communication and really loving it...you all know how much she likes to talk. She is still working as the bookkeeper at Bridge Builders International. In addition to bookkeeping she has been helping promote the summer projects that BBI will be hosting in Latvia. The projects are similar to last year, there will be the 2nd Annual Thomas Kinkade Art Camp and “teRiga”, a city service project with American and Latvian youth volunteers. More to come on these later.

Doxology

We have been attending “Doxology”, the new college-age service at Jefferson Baptist Church, for about nine months. Peter, Scotty’s brother, is the college pastor there. We have been a part of the core leadership team since the beginning of Doxology. Scotty is in charge of some of the operations of the service and Crystal sings in the band.
Doxology is a little bit different than what you may expect from a Baptist church. There is a strong emphasis on art and community. The walls display paintings, photos, poems and many other forms of art. The worship band plays mostly original music, and there is often interpretive dance and artistic videos as a part of the service.
There is a coffee shop after the service every week. It has a casual atmosphere where people feel open to converse with people outside their social bubble. There is also a small stage where musicians from Doxology have an opportunity to share their talents.

Crystal to Latvia

Crystal went to Latvia with Bridge Builders International. Returning to Latvia was a wonderful experience; it was amazing how familiar things were. This feeling of familiarity and comfort with the city and the culture made her more able to focus on the people and the ministry.

Crystal with good friend, Renalda, in Latvia.

Matthews Church, church that Hub partnered with in 2003

Streets in Old Riga.

Blackhead Sqaure in Old Riga at night.

Her time was mostly dedicated to the TeRiga service project. TeRiga is a practical service project that brought together Latvians and Americans from over 25 churches.

teRiga participant cleaning up at the most visible sight the city allowed us to clean.
Before and After shots of this sight below.

Before

There were about 100 Latvians and 12 Americans working simultaneously on 8 project sites. The work ranged from repainting play structures to clearing underbrush to major cleaning of a burned down market. TeRiga was seen and heard. Many people stood at the edge of the work sites and watched, by the second day many of these people began to approach the participants and ask “What are you doing?”. Their actions spoke for them and gave them the opportunity to share that God cares about people and Christians want to serve their community and share the love of God.

Latvian participants explaining their works to passerbyer.

Another part of the project was to bring the Message to people in the form of music outreach. As you may know Latvians are crazy about all art, but music is their passion. There were two music events, both in very populated squares or parks. Many local and international Christian musicians showcased their original music and used their music platform to share Christ. The cool part about all this is that the Latvians took ownership of the projects. The Latvians did all the communicating and up front spotlight time so the rich-Christian-American-trying-to-convert-the-world stereotype was broken. Many more people were reached this way.

British band performing in Blackhead Square in Riga.

During her time in Latvia she was able to connect with quite a few friends that made last year. These friends are involved in youth programs at their churches and even going on international mission trips. It is encouraging to see as we minister to the Latvians they are in turn going out and ministering to others.

Crystal with Anna (next to Crystal in white), a friend that was made in Hub's trip to Latvia summer of 2003.

Before

After

Scotty to Mexico

Scotty went with his brother (Pastor Pete) with the youth group to Mexico to build homes for a couple of families. This was Scotty’s first trip where he was in charge of the building of one of the houses. That was a challenge for him, but he left good about it at the end of the week and his crew said he did a good job. He is hoping to go back and do that more in the future.

still newlyweds

Hello from the newlyweds! No doubt our last 8 months have been quite the adventure. We are adjusting to being married nicely. We have been busy with work and school; we even took a couple classes together this last term. Scotty is working full-time as a framer for Steve Oien Construction in Philomath and Crystal is still working as a bookkeeper for Bridge Builders International (BBI).

Scotty and Crystal on the bus during our honeymoon.

We just moved from Lebanon to Corvallis a few weeks ago. Even though this means we are a half an hour away from Crystal’s family, it is nice that both of us are that much closer to work. This also puts Crystal closer to the band she has been singing with lately. This gives her more opportunities to sing at shows where she can also sing some of the songs she has written. The lead singer in the band just put out a CD with Crystal singing backup vocals. That is really exciting for us.

and...we're married!!!

Mr. and Mrs. Kelley, August 16, 2003 at Camp Tadmor

Next stop....Latvia

Crystal has returned from her mission trip to Latvia. The trip started out with two vans, nine very excited youth and way too much luggage. By the time we reached our 9^th hour of being on the same airplane we still had way too much luggage; however the excitement transitioned to sleepiness. If you have every traveled overseas you know what I mean. We arrived in Latvia 11pm local time and were greeted by several members of Matthew’s youth church. They drove us to the church and showed us where we would be staying for the next two weeks. The next day Marcis, the youth pastor of Matthew’s church, woke us up bright and early and we dove headfirst into our partnership ministry.

There is so much to tell, way too much really so I will focus on a few of the highlights. Our time in Latvia was spread out among several ministry opportunities; opportunities that were diverse to allow each team member to shine in the ministry that they have a passion for. All the ministries we did in partnership with the youth of Matthew’s church, this helped us build strong trusting relationships.

Children’s Ministry

Several times through out the two weeks we all (Latvians and Americans) went to spend time at orphanages. All the girls went to a baby orphanage where we were able to hold and play with a baby for an hour. All the boys went to an adolescent orphanage where they made the kids a BBQ lunch and played games with them for a few hours. This is very important because Latvia has such a high rate of orphans in the country that workers cannot provide personal care for each and every child. Spending just a few hours with these kids was a huge opportunity to show them the love of God and that they are loved. We have committed to praying for the kids we interacted with, that they will know the love of God and turn to Him in their time of need.

Music Ministry

We brought over our worship band from the Hub in hopes of being able to minister with music. Matthew’s Church had two youth services in the two weeks that we were there. The Hub band was able to play in both these youth services and two Sunday adult services. This was a great time to share our passion for the Lord with fellow Christians and encourage them. The Latvians sing some of the same songs as us but in Latvian. It was pretty incredible to hear many voices singing in different languages, it really brings a sense of unity despite our cultural differences. We also did music ministry outside of the church. We put on a concert of original music, the Latvians call it “American rock and roll”, at a military base. We also shared testimonies and gave a couple hundred Latvian soldiers the opportunity to accept Christ to. Many of them came up to talk with us after the concert.

Evangelism

Several members of our team prepared a mime drama presenting the salvation message. This was a great tool because it gave us a platform to communicate despite the language barrier. We used this drama many many times throughout the week. The most responsive was on the busy streets of old Riga (Capital of Latvia). With the help of an interpreter we briefly explained the drama and invited everyone to come learn more at Matthew’s Church. This by far was the most influential tool to communicate to the Latvians because they place a high value on the arts and music and performance.

Partnership

This was the whole purpose of our trip to Latvia, for us to build trusting relationship with the youth there and partner with to help strengthen both their ministry and ours. One of the many ministries that Matthew’s Church has is to go out in the country and help develop and strengthen smaller youth groups. We went with them to two other youth groups, one in Liegatne and one in Ventspils. We helped lead the youth service, we used the above ministries of music and evangelism and our Pastor Peter Kelley gave a message. Outside of the youth services we spent the entire day with the youth of these churches, encouraging them and making friendships. These times included time at the Baltic Sea, hiking in the forest, playing by a stream in old ruins, exploring castles, sightseeing in Lithuania, and time at the church playing volleyball or music together.